Apple’s $100 million content delivery network (CDN) is now live in the U.S. and Europe. It will be transmitting traffic to Comcast and other Internet providers directly, courtesy of paid interconnection deals. The CDN is capable of transmitting numerous terabits of data per second, and so will be of great value to Apple when it dispenses new releases of OS X and iOS.

Over time, much of the iTunes and app download traffic will be brought over to Apple’s CDN.

Analyst Dan Rayburn specified a trace route that showed OS X downloads are being delivered to Comcast’s network directly from Apple. It is also possible that AT&T and Verizon will have interconnects with the new CDN.

Customers should observe better performance on larger downloads now that the Apple CDN is live.

“Apple already controls the hardware, the OS (iOS/OS X) as well as the iTunes/App store platforms,” said Rayburn. “Right now they control the entire customer experience, except for the way content is delivered to their devices, and they are quickly working to change that. While Apple doesn’t own the last mile, paying to connect directly to it (in some places) and delivering content from their own servers allows them much more control over the user experience, especially for cloud based services.”

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